Don't Think Me a Monster
by Rinusagitora
Summary: IshiNemu. Zombie!Nemu AU. Oneshot. Rated T for implied gore. /She just wanted to be loved, but she was a monster./


Decided to post a request off tumblr onto here because why not *shrugs*

Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach or its characters

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She pushed her plate away from her and picked up the napkin she spread across her thighs, and she wiped the blood and brain matter off her lips, and she heaved a weighty sigh. She hadn't been very hungry for a few weeks, she thought as she stared down at the left over hemisphere, and she wondered what was the cause of her recent anorexia.

She frowned to herself then. It was likely _him_.

No… she corrected herself. It wasn't his fault that she hadn't much of an appetite. He may have triggered it, but he wasn't exactly the _cause,_ per se. No, the cause was more likely her uncharacteristic anxiety she had whenever she was in his company. The "what if"s, if she had to describe it. What if he somehow discovered that she wasn't human, and hadn't been for awhile, and what if he found out that she consumed human meat to sustain herself, and what if he rejected her because of that? Those sorts of thoughts plagued her, made her stomach flip whenever she she dwelled too long on them.

She chuckled bitterly to herself. It was pathetic how she was reduced to a nervous pulp whenever she thought about Uryuu, and it was pathetic that she even worried about what he thought of her. It was like she was sixteen all over again, heart palpitations and stutters and all. She hadn't felt like that for someone in a long time, she thought. She had finally become content to a life which there was no permanence, no desire, just existence, and then he came along and shattered her capitulation so thoroughly. He took an axe to the dam she created around her heart and all the memories and emotions she bottled up flooded over her like a typhoon, and she would've hated him for it if she could've brought herself to.

She leaned back into the couch and frowned. She thought the wounds of her human life had closed long ago, or at least scabbed over. Maybe she had just grown desensitized to the ache over the years, ignored it until the permanence of her appearance and the repetition of high school in a new district every three years and life alone in little apartments and the care she took to assure that nobody discovered she was animated corpse was buried under indifference and a workload that would've made a doctor ill.

She sighed. She wasn't sure how her father resurrected her, or why, for that matter. She couldn't remember a time when he actually showed affection towards her, not even before she died of pneumonia… seventy years ago? Yes, she had been undead for seventy years, and her father had been dead for a good forty years then. She loved him, she did, but she was happy the entitled, abusive shitpile was gone.

But despite her distaste for her father, he _was_ a genius. He brought a corpse back to life and she didn't look a day older than sixteen. She still had lividity down her back and her legs, which was the reason she was always so modest, but she still retained full motor control and cognitive processes, and she was immune to illness and pain and any injuries inflicted on her healed in the space of mere hours. She required human flesh as sustenance or her body would slow until it died again, which wasn't pleasant, she recalled, a lot like dry socket if she had to describe it.

She was a medical miracle, she thought. She just didn't want to be.

She sighed and leaned forward, and she draped the saran wrap over the leftover hemisphere, and her door opened suddenly. And there _he_ stood, Uryuu Ishida in all of his casual clothes glory with a McDonalds bag in his grasp, and it felt like somebody had dropped a lead ball in the pit of her stomach.

His eyes settled on the brain on the plate, and he looked a little green around the gills, and she watched his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed.

"Nemu…"

"It's not what it looks like, I promise." She blurted out. "It's meatloaf, and since it's almost Halloween I wanted to watch some zombie movies so I carved a meatloaf in the shape of a brain."

God, that was a shitty lie, she thought.

"That's… that's not a meatloaf, Nemu." He said, and she watched as he raked his hand through his hair. "Oh my god,"

"I-it is-..." She sighed then, and she hung her head and covered her face with her hands. She would've cried if she could've produced tears. It was like every nightmare she ever had came to life right in front of her eyes, and it almost made her ill.

She heaved another heavy sigh, and she pushed her bangs out of her eyes. "Please close the door. I can explain."

"I… I can't do that." He said somberly.

She understood, she really did. He walked in on his best friend with a half-eaten brain on a plate, it was easy to get the impression that she was a cannibalistic murderer. But she wasn't, and she couldn't lose him because he got the wrong impression. She'd tell him everything if he wanted, even if she was ashamed.

"Uryuu, I'm not going to kill you. I'd lose the only thing on this god-forsaken planet that I actually care about, so please shut the door so I can explain myself."

He averted his eyes and looked down at his shoes, and she sighed in relief as he finally shut the door and sat next to her, and he set the paper bag on the table.

She buried her face in her hands, and she wondered how she could break it to him believably, and she rubbed her face in her frustration. Best to just dive head first, she decided, and she turned to look at him.

"I'm dead." She said. "Well, _un_ dead I suppose, if you want to be technical."

He blinked unreadably, and she guessed that he was skeptical, which was understandable too, but but fixable.

She picked the steak knife she laid across the plate and jabbed it into her gut all the way down to its hilt, and she heard him scream.

"Jesus Christ, Nemu," he said breathlessly, and he ran over to her and pulled her onto the floor and draped her legs over the cushions, and she would've smiled then. He was so sweet, she thought as he applied pressure around the stab, possibly the only good man left in the world.

She knocked his hand away as he made to pull out his cell, and she pulled the knife out of her and showed him that she didn't actively bleed. "See? I feel fine." She said, and she pulled her legs off the couch and faced him.

He looked ill again, she thought, and she frowned as he gagged.

"I'm… I'm going to be sick." He announced.

"You know where the bathroom is." She said, and she watched as he scrambled towards it.

It was hasty to stab herself, she thought then, hasty and rash. She could've just showed him that she didn't have a pulse or held her breath for some time, or something else less drastic than that. She'd apologize as soon as he was finished, she thought.

She cleaned up the leftover hemisphere, placed it in the fridge and locked it so he wouldn't have to look at it, and she washed the knife in the sink and rinsed out her mouth so she wouldn't have the smell the brain matter on her breath, and she filled him a glass of water for him.

Uryuu returned a minute later, and she gave him the glass and he gratefully accepted it and downed the entire thing in one go.

"I'm sorry." She said. "For scaring you like that. There were other methods to prove that I'm undead and it was inconsiderate of me to not use those instead."

He set the glass in the sink, and he turned to her, and she watched him smile softly. "It's... I'm just a little shaken, is all." He said, and he scratched his ear awkwardly. "But for how long have you been... uh... undead? Did I ever know human Nemu?"

"No. I've been dead longer than you or your parents have been alive."

She watched his eyes bug out of his head. "How long longer?"

"A total of seventy years," she replied. "My body is technically dead. I don't have a pulse, and I don't need oxygen, though I breathe to help blend in, and I feel very little to no pain, but I require human flesh as sustenance. But I promise I haven't killed anybody. I steal parts from the morgue." She explained.

"I-I believe you, I promise, but _how?_ " He inquired in disbelief. "It's just… it's miraculous, is what it is."

"I don't know how. I just know that I came down with pneumonia and died, and my father somehow resurrected me. Which is also a mystery why he did so because he treat my sisters and me like shit, but I guess he couldn't let his favorite punching bag rot six feet under." She snorted, and she frowned to herself. She was exhausted suddenly, exhausted but lighter. Almost relieved.

She leaned forward and laid her forehead on his shoulder, and she felt him hold her. "Please don't think ill of me. Please don't think me a monster."

"I don't." He assured her. "It's just a lot to take in."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize. I'm sure I can handle some of your bullshit if you can handle my bullshit."

She chuckled softly, and she smiled to herself. "Thank you, Uryuu. It means more than I can describe."


End file.
